Obama also asked Congress to add wildfires to the list of natural disasters eligible for federal emergency assistance. That move would eliminate the need for the government to dip into wildfire-prevention programs to pay ever-increasing firefighting costs.

Last summer's wildfires blackened large swaths of forest in the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs. The Mountain Fire consumed more than 27,000 acres and destroyed seven homes. The Silver Fire burned more than 20,000 acres, destroying 26 homes as well as other buildings.

The bulk of the White House's funding request is for shoring up security along the southwestern border — where thousands of children are arriving without parents or guardians. It also will be used to improve temporary housing for the children in U.S. custody and to speed up their deportation proceedings.

Bigger wildfires are a growing problem, particularly out West. Experts say climate change and other factors such as increasing development along forest edges are to blame.

Of late, the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department have transferred money from elsewhere in their budgets to meet escalating costs — a practice known as "fire borrowing." Congress has reimbursed the agencies after the fact.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Obama wrote, "Too often in recent years, this cycle of transfers has undermined our efforts to prepare for and reduce the severity of wildfires, which is both fiscally imprudent and self-defeating."

Putting wildfires on an equal legislative footing with hurricanes, earthquakes and other major disasters would "provide funding certainty," allow the government to spend more on programs to reduce the fire risk, "and maintain fiscal responsibility by addressing wildfire disaster needs through agreed-upon funding mechanisms," Obama wrote.

"The crisis on the border and the ongoing wildfire season underscore the need for Congress to set politics aside and ensure the federal government has the tools it needs," he said in a statement.

Obama's 2015 spending request to Congress has a proposal allowing the Forest Service and the Interior Department to tap into a Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster fund to combat the biggest 1 percent of fires, which consume about 30 percent of Uncle Sam's wildfire budget each year. Created in 2011, the FEMA fund has about $12 billion, of which about half is used up in a year.